


Each New Tomorrow

by 1shinymess (magpie4shinies)



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fade to Black, Gen, I'm leaning toward a happy ending, Infidelity, M/M, Possibly Pre-Slash, i like it when everyone is happy, it's an addiction, sort of post- and pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie4shinies/pseuds/1shinymess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapper thought he'd have more trouble tracking down Hawkeye Pierce and making him listen after the war. He hadn't reckoned on Hawkeye's own mercurial nature, but that's fine. It would probably work out better this way, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each New Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinlizzy2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/gifts).



Louise was humming Joni James while she checked the chicken when the doorbell rang.

Trapper heard the elephantine pounding of his little girls -- always a mystery how they could sound so loud when he knew how tiny they were -- before he could do more than push away from the table. 

“I’ll get it!” Becky shouted.

Trapper followed the footsteps -- footstomps? -- through the upstairs hall over the kitchen to the set of stairs and shared a wry smirk with Louise as he stood and waved her to keep on with dinner. He set his notebook down on the schedule of residents for San Francisco General and headed around the empty door jamb into the living room. “Becky! Don’t answer it till I get there.”

There was a short pause and then “OK, pops!”

Rolling his eyes, Trapper crossed around the couch and through the opening to the entry hall. Becky was waiting impatiently with her hand on the doorknob and Trapper met her annoyed pout with an arched brow. “ _Pops?_ ”

Becky shrugged, blonde curls bouncing faintly with the motion. “What’s wrong with pops?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Trapper said slowly, entering the hall and ruffling her hair. “Go ahead.”

Annoyance forgotten, Becky pulled the door open immediately, a bright smile on her face -- until she realized the boy on the other side of it was much older than the one she’d been hoping to see. “Oh.”

“I can see the resemblance already,” the man said wryly. 

Becky hadn’t opened the door far enough for Trapper to see from this angle, but that voice…

“Oh, uh. Sorry about that, sir. May I help you?” 

Trapper tugged the door free of her hand, ignoring her questioning look. After the heavy wood cleared a certain angle, he was able to make out the form and figure of one of the few people that kept him from completely repressing 15 months of his life. 

Hawkeye Pierce’s blue eyes were still electrifying. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I’m here to see your father, actually.”

Trapper noted Becky turning to look at him curiously from the corner of his eye and tore his eyes away from Hawkeye to give her a reassuring nod. “He’s an old friend, sweetheart. Can you let your mother know to set an extra place?”

“Sure,” Becky said, glancing at Hawkeye again before heading into the living room to deliver the message.

Hawkeye’s voice was quiet but he was smiling faintly, emphasizing wrinkles that had deepened around his eyes. “Hi, Trap.”

“Hey, Hawk.” Trapper whispered, then went from being just out of arm’s reach to having his face buried into the salt-and-pepper Hawkeye’s temple had become.

Hawkeye laughed faintly, thin shoulders trembling under Trapper’s grip but his own embrace just as fierce.

Trapper could hear Louise in the background, but couldn’t make out her question through the roaring in his ears. Finally, gentle hands settled, one on his shoulder and one on Hawkeye’s from what he could make out, and she tugged them both, still locked up, into the house. 

Hawkeye’s arms tightened even more for a moment before loosening. Trapper forced his own grip to ease and eventually there was a forearms’ length of space between them: literally, as their grips had naturally slid to hold each other’s elbows. 

“You have to be the infamous Hawkeye,” Louise murmured from beside them, and squeezed his hand where it rested on Trapper’s arm in greeting. 

“Famous in song and legend,” Hawkeye returned automatically, then looked faintly surprised. “But you can call me Ben, if you prefer.”

Trapper grinned at him and then at Louise, unable to contain his pleasure. “Can you believe it? I thought I was going to have to beg time off -- and you know they owe me after all this outside work I’ve been doing with the residents -- to hunt this joker down! And he just shows up, no warning...this guy!”

Hawkeye looked faintly abashed then, eyes falling as he glanced at Louise and released Trapper’s arm. “I am sorry about the intrusion...Mrs. McIntyre?”

“Louise, please,” Louise replied, smiling before she glanced at Trapper. “Would you call Kathy? You know she doesn’t seem capable of hearing my voice anymore.”

“Dinner’s ready?” Trapper asked, pulling his attention from Hawkeye to clarify.

Louise nodded. “Becky’s finishing putting it on the table now. I moved your things to your office. We’re ready when you are.”

Trapper smiled brightly and looked back at Hawkeye. “You picked the right night, Hawk. Louise’s baked chicken is a prize winner.”

Louise rolled her eyes and turned, heading into the living room. “He’s neglecting to tell you that it was a ‘Best Wife’s’ prize he invented himself.”

Hawkeye laughed, tailing after her. “Oh? Well, with a recommendation like that…”

“Hey!” Trapper said, aping affrontation as he pushed the door shut behind them and locked it. “I’ll have you know I have a very discerning palate.”

“Zale always did say that about you,” Hawkeye said, glancing back at him as he followed Louise into the combined kitchen/diningroom. 

“Zale wouldn’t know discerning if it walked up and bit him on the nose.” Trapper called after them, then took the stairs. “Kathy! Kath, time for dinner, princess.”

He waited for a response and when none came after a minute, he continued up the stairs and knocked on her door. “Kathy?” The sound of a chair being pushed back transferred through the door and then it opened. 

“Yeah?”

“Dinnertime, baby.”

Kathy sighed. “I was really making headway on that report.”

Trapper’s brows arched. “The one due tomorrow?”

“Uh…”

“You can finish working on it after we eat,” Trapper replied, steering her the few steps down the hall to the staircase and urging her forward. “We’ve got company and I want him to meet all of my girls. One of my old friends from the army.”

Kathy’s expression immediately switched from sulky to calculating, and Trapper sighed. She wanted all of the stories of Trapper’s time during the war and hated how much he censored himself. 

It ended up being better and worse than he’d thought: yes, Hawkeye told several stories Trapper would’ve left out or severely censored, but they were nearly all of them about pranks Trapper had pulled. He only told one gut wrencher at the end, about a kid Trapper had sat up with for two days straight before they were sure he’d pull through. 

After that, the girls were quieter and didn’t argue when Trapper sent them upstairs, and Kathy hugged him tighter than normal when she whispered goodnight. Louise glanced at Hawkeye and then looked at Trapper with her brows furrowed faintly, then stood and began putting away the leftover sides, since they’d stripped all of the meat from the chicken.

Hawkeye’s eyes were unfocused and distant and Trapper sighed, his own imagination bringing to mind too many memories without his input. He pushed up from the table and took his plate to the sink with the girls’, bumping Hawkeye’s shoulder with his hip as he passed. 

He heard the scrape of another chair and glanced over the small back yard he’d just mowed two days ago through the kitchen window while Hawkeye set his own plate in the sink. 

“Seemed like a long time for such a small amount of it,” Hawkeye said quietly.

“Yeah,” Trapper said, voice rough. 

Hawkeye cleared his throat after a minute, nudging Trappe’s shoulder with his own. “I should head out. It’s late and I still have to find a room.”

“What?” Louise asked, turning from the foil-covered bowls on the counter. “A room? At a hotel? Absolutely not! John -- ”

Trapper held up his hands in surrender. “Of course not! Hawk, don’t be a dummy. You’re staying here. We’ve got a guest room.”

Hawkeye looked between them with an unreadable expression before a familiar grin transformed his features. “Well, if you insist…”

“Good,” Louise declared, and tucked the last foil-covered bowl of left-overs -- the spinach, it looked like, Trapper noted with some regret, having hoped Hawkeye would help the girls eat it so he wouldn’t have to -- into the fridge. “Now, I’m going to help Becky with her homework and then put the girls to bed. Why don’t you boys take this to the office?”

“Thanks, Lou,” Trapper murmured, crossing to where she was standing and leaning her into the counter to kiss her properly.

When they separated, she looked at him softly, and the memory of things he’d confessed when he’d returned from the war passed between them.

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.

“Oh, hush,” Louise murmured, pushing him back. “Ben, come here.”

Hawkeye blinked, but gamefully stepped closer. Trapper grinned at his surprise when Louise pulled him into a light hug and kissed his cheek. “I’ll lay down some clean sheets while I’m upstairs. Have a good night and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Trapper laughed as Hawkeye nodded slowly, brow furrowing in bemusement. “Of course. You too, Louise.” 

Louise sailed out of the kitchen, supremely secure in her realm, and Hawkeye looked back at Trapper, blinking and looking vaguely like he’d been slapped, but pleasantly.

Trapper walked back to his side and patted his shoulder. “Yeah, she has that effect, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t think you deserve her,” Hawkeye answered frankly. 

Trapper snorted. “That makes two of us, but she disagrees. Come on, office is through the living room.”

When they’d settled into the comfortable chairs Trapper’s father had given him as a graduation gift, hands cradling snifters of sipping brandy, Trapper noticed Hawkeye chewing on the corner of his mouth. “What?”

Hawkeye blinked, eyes snapping up from his drink to Trapper’s face. “What, what?”

Trapper rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ‘what, what?’ me, Hawkeye Pierce. Spit it out.”

Hawkeye worked his cheek a little more, then took a sip of his brandy hesitantly and set it down. “Does she know about…”

“My affairs?” Trapper offered, swirling his brandy before taking a sip of his own. “Yeah, actually. I laid it all out when I got back. It wasn’t a huge surprise though: we had sort of an open relationship before she got pregnant with Kathy, and she was only a little upset. I didn’t realize how bad it was going to get and she understood I had no real safe way to ask her permission.”

“Yeah?” Hawkeye asked softly. “Wow, that’s...great, Trap.” Trapper nodded seriously, fully aware of how lucky he was.

They were quiet for a long moment before Trapper finally asked something he’d been curious about since he’d left: “Did you get my message?”

Hawkeye blinked, drawn from memory back to the present and then back again to a different memory. He laughed softly, and a tension seemed to ease in his shoulders. “When you left? Yeah. God, Trap, you should’ve seen it: the kid was beet red.”

Trapper laughed. “I thought he was gonna pass out when I asked him to pass it on!”

Hawkeye snorted and they both choked, eyes catching before they both lost it. 

“It was almost as good as getting to say goodbye in person,” Trapper gasped finally, when he’d regained enough control to breathe once for every two chuckles.

Hawkeye’s expression tightened briefly before easing, and the humor drained from Trapper. This was his second biggest regret from how he’d left Korea: leaving Hawk like that had been the really rotten, especially after Henry had…

“I guess,” Hawkeye said, mouth pulling up in an ironic expression only loosely related to smiling by marriage. 

Trapper swallowed, setting his own brandy to the side. Maybe he could explain why, at least. It had to have hurt Hawkeye worse than the guilt gnawed at him: it was always harder being left behind than being the one leaving. “I really tried, Hawk.”

“I know, Trap,” Hawkeye said quietly. “I heard about it for weeks.”

Trapper snorted. “Maybe, but...really, I tried everything. You were completely incommunicado, and it seemed like the more I tried, the less likely it was to get through to you. Finally, I started writing a letter, at least, but then…”

He looked up. Hawkeye was watching him intently, blue eyes focused and expression that same kind of alien unreadable for earlier. It was so wrong, somehow, to see an expression on Hawkeye’s face he couldn’t read. “I don’t know. I just got paranoid. It was like...what if the reason I was having so much trouble trying to say goodbye meant that it wouldn’t be? I started to figure that it might be...a message or something, promising that you’d make it through and we’d see each other again.”

Trapper licked his lips and then continued. “I just...got paranoid, I guess. I thought, ‘if I leave this letter, what if...’ and then I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say or write anything about it, anymore.”

“That’s why...with Radar, your ‘message’...” Hawkeye said slowly, eyes drifting to Trapper’s right as he processed the explanation.

“Yeah, I couldn’t even give him a real message, and I’ve always been better at action, anyway.”

Hawkeye snorted and looked back at Trapper. “You’re still a jerk.”

His voice was fond. Trapper relaxed, his stomach started to unknot itself. “Yeah, well...tough. You’re stuck with me.”

Hawkeye’s brows furrowed. “Oh, am I?”

Trapper grinned. “Yeah, now that the girls have met their uncle Hawkeye, I figure it won’t be hard to get them excited for a summer trip to Maine.”

Hawkeye blinked. “Hey, wait a minute…”

“What, you don’t have the room?” Trapper asked, remembering his friend’s rapturous descriptions of his family’s ‘cottage’ from more than one occasion.

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “Dad knocked out a wall, actually, so...not really. Well, maybe if -- “

That was a lucky break. “That’s fine. The girls could stay here, if you don’t mind me and Louise hanging around for a couple of weeks.”

“You and Louise?” Hawkeye asked slowly.

“Yeah,” Trapper said, reading Hawkeye’s expression and putting the plan together as he spoke. It wasn’t how he’d intended to intrude back into Hawkeye’s life, but it might be better than what he’d planned. “Lou’s parents love having the girls in the summer.”

“I suppose,” Hawkeye said carefully. “I’d have to buy a new bed…I’ve only got the one there, right now. Dad moved back to Vermont once I could pick things back up in Crabapple Cove.”

Trapper thought about his conversations with Louise, and her expression earlier. “Hold that thought, OK?”

“Trapper.” 

Trapper held up a hand, forestalling any further comments. “I have to talk to Lou, but...just trust me, OK?”

Hawkeye held his eyes for a long minute before he finally leaned back and exhaled loudly. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a McIntyre special?”

Trapper grinned. “You love my ideas...eventually.”


End file.
